“I don’t know,” was all I could say.
I left school early and went to Jamie’s, blowing off my classes after lunch. When I knocked at the door, Jamie answered it the way she always did, cheerfully and without, it seemed, a care in the world.
“Hello, Landon,” she said, “this is a surprise.”
When she leaned in to kiss me, I kissed her back, though the whole thing made me want to cry.
“My father isn’t home right now, but if you’d like to sit on the porch, we can.”
“How can you do this?” I asked suddenly. “How can you pretend that nothing is wrong?”
“I’m not pretending that nothing is wrong, Landon. Let me get my coat and we’ll sit outside and talk, okay?”
She smiled at me, waiting for an answer, and I finally nodded, my lips pressed together. She reached out and patted my arm.
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
I walked to the chair and sat down, Jamie emerging a moment later. She wore a heavy coat, gloves, and a hat to keep her warm. The nor’easter had passed, and the day wasn’t nearly as cold as it had been over the weekend. Still, though, it was too much for her.
“You weren’t in school today,” I said.
She looked down and nodded. “I know.”
“Are you ever going to come back?” Even though I already knew the answer, I needed to hear it from her.
“No,” she said softly, “I’m not.”
“Why? Are you that sick already?” I started to tear up, and she reached out and took my hand.
“No. Today I feel pretty good, actually. It’s just that I want to be home in the mornings, before my father has to go to the office. I want to spend as much time with him as I can.”
Before I die, she meant to say but didn’t. I felt nauseated and couldn’t respond.
“When the doctors first told us,” she went on, “they said that I should try to lead as normal a life as possible for as long as I could. They said it would help me keep my strength up.”
“There’s nothing normal about this,” I said bitterly.
“I know.”
“Aren’t you frightened?”
Somehow I expected her to say no, to say something wise like a grown-up would, or to explain to me that we can’t presume to understand the Lord’s plan.
She looked away. “Yes,” she finally said, “I’m frightened all the time.”
“Then why don’t you act like it?”
“I do. I just do it in private.”
“Because you don’t trust me?”
“No,” she said, “because I know you’re frightened, too.”
I began to pray for a miracle.
They supposedly happen all the time, and I’d read about them in newspapers. People regaining use of their limbs after being told they’d never walk again, or somehow surviving a terrible accident when all hope was lost. Every now and then a traveling preacher’s tent would be set up outside of Beaufort, and people would go there to watch as people were healed. I’d been to a couple, and though I assumed that most of the healing was no more than a slick magic show, since I never recognized the people who were healed, there were occasionally things that even I couldn’t explain. Old man Sweeney, the baker here in town, had been in the Great War fighting with an artillery unit behind the trenches, and months of shelling the enemy had left him deaf in one ear. It wasn’t an act—he really couldn’t hear a single thing, and there’d been times when we were kids that we’d been able to sneak off with a cinnamon roll because of it. But the preacher started praying feverishly and finally laid his hand upon the side of Sweeney’s head. Sweeney screamed out loud, making people practically jump out of their seats. He had a terrified look on his face, as if the guy had touched him with a white-hot poker, but then he shook his head and looked around, uttering the words “I can hear again.” Even he couldn’t believe it. “The Lord,” the preacher had said as Sweeney made his way back to his seat, “can do anything. The Lord listens to our prayers.”
So that night I opened the Bible that Jamie had given me for Christmas and began to read. Now, I’d heard all about Bible in Sunday school or at church, but to be frank, I just remembered the highlights—the Lord sending the seven plagues so the Israelites could leave Egypt, Jonah being swallowed by a whale, Jesus walking across the water or raising Lazarus from the dead. There were other biggies, too. I knew that practically every chapter of the Bible has the Lord doing something spectacular, but I hadn’t learned them all. As Christians we leaned heavily on teachings of the New Testament, and I didn’t know the first things about books like Joshua or Ruth or Joel. The first night I read through Genesis, the second night I read through Exodus. Leviticus was next, followed by Numbers and then Deuteronomy. The going got a little slow during certain parts, especially as all the laws were being explained, yet I couldn’t put it down. It was a compulsion that I didn’t fully understand.
It was late one night, and I was tired by the time I eventually reached Psalms, but somehow I knew this was what I was looking for. Everyone has heard the Twenty-third Psalm, which starts, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” but I wanted to read the others, since none of them were supposed to be more important than the others. After an hour I came across an underlined section that I assumed Jamie had noted because it meant something to her. This is what it said:
I cry to you, my Lord, my rock! Do not be deaf to me, for if you are silent, I shall go down to the pit like the rest. Hear my voice raised in petition as I cry to you for help, as I raise my hands, my Lord, toward your holy of holies.